Network APIs to spawn ‘endless apps’ – report

• Network API exposure is now a big deal for telcos
• TelecomTV surveyed the network operator community to get its views on the trend
• The survey results feature in our new Network APIs Strategy report
• Our telco respondents believe there are ‘endless’ opportunities for app development based on network APIs

Telcos are confident that network API exposure will spawn ‘endless application development opportunities’ and help to generate new revenue opportunities, according to the results of a recent TelecomTV survey conducted with members from the network operator community. 

In June, TelecomTV conducted an industry survey that sought the views of telcos on one of the hottest topics around right now – the potential impact of network API exposure and the implementation of telco-as-a-platform strategies. We received responses from more than 70 executives, representing 54 different telcos around the world and the results are now available to view in our Network APIs Strategy report, the latest in our DSP Leaders report series. All of our reports are editorial-led and available for anyone to download for free.

We conducted the survey and published the resulting report because network API exposure strategies are now being adopted by a majority of telcos around the world as they seek to identify new revenue streams and find better ways to engage with enterprise customers and application developers. At the heart of this development is the Open Gateway initiative driven by the GSMA and supported by the Linux Foundation and the TM Forum, which has, in a relatively short space of time, attracted a great deal of support from the telco community and laid very solid foundations for network API exposure. By the end of June this year, 53 operators, representing 245 networks and more than two-thirds of global mobile connections, had signed up to the industry scheme and a number of operators in markets including Brazil, Germany, Spain and Sri Lanka have already launched network API services.  

That represents strong support, but quite what the end results will be is unknown, though the telco community is confident that it will result in new revenue streams and improved engagement with developers and enterprises – that much is clear from the survey results.

We asked our respondents a range of questions, one of which focused on the potential of network API exposure to result in the development of a broad range of new services. One of the observations from the more cynical side of the industry in these early days of network APIs services is that there is little variation in the services being launched and that, even down the line, the potential spread of applications is never going to be that exciting.

So we asked the telcos: Do you think there are limited or potentially endless application development opportunities based on telco network APIs?     

As you can see from the chart above, we have an optimistic set of respondents, as 63% believe the application development opportunities are “endless, developer innovation will see to that”. Only 20% of our survey respondents fall into the cynical camp, believing that the app dev opportunities are “limited, mostly to location- and security-enabled apps”, while 17% weren’t sure how things will pan out. 

To find out more about the results of the survey, download the report for free right now from this link. 

Network APIs and telco-as-a-platform strategies were also the subject of one of our sessions, Unlocking platform opportunities with network APIs (co-hosted by Laurent Leboucher, group CTO and senior vice president of Orange Innovation Networks), during the recent DSP Leaders World Forum event – and what a great session it was! See Network APIs? Let’s get on with it.

- Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV